💎 PREMIUM: App//reviews - Full Archive

Its a great game, conceptually. I have never completed a single Final Fantasy title before this and I probably never will. Its not necessary to enjoy the game or appreciate the lore as its assembled or references from earlier titles. It is really its own thing. I'm sure some members of the FFXIV community are going to see this review and think I'm underselling it -- sure fine, go write your own review. I just want to be plain.

The bread and butter of the game is the main story quest (read: hundreds of hours of mostly voiced, click through dialogue and instanced four man dungeons, eight man trial battle content) and raid content (8 man battle content outside the main story questline, or alliance 24 man battle content (three teams of 8)). There is content in the MSQ (and side stories with some of the raid quest lines) that have literally made me cry, real cathartic if you let yourself get immersed into it. Anywho -- yes, there are plenty of other things to do, but if you aren't in it for the grind, this is probably the center of focus for you (unless you want to do high end raiding, in which case... good luck friend, you're gonna need it). This is to say you will spend lots of time in instanced battle content, and the closer you get to the "end game", you will be repeating this content _alot_. You will enjoy it for awhile, eventually you will enjoy it even more if you make good friends to run it with. But otherwise it can get stale after some time. There is also PvP but its mid and anyone who tells you otherwise has lost the plot (sorry not sorry). There is also an avid role play community. Not really my thing, and uhh... the spicier version of that has largely eclipsed the traditional role play stuff, but its there.

Everything else in this game centers around the typical MMO grind. Crafting, relic weapons, society quests, the rare fall guys collab content even -- it all centers around the grind. Make big number go up and all that. Its not like and probably will never be like a gacha game where it rewards short but frequent sessions and whaling when you want to save some time (unless you want to skip part of the MSQ or job leveling -- but skipping job leveling is a bad idea IMO, people will give you less empathy if you're Lv100 and don't know your skill rotations). If you just want to get on for big patch content updates/the MSQ, well you can pretty much ignore the grind entirely. But if you want to participate in all the side content, if you don't like grind, you won't enjoy it.

The community is somewhat polarizing. On one hand, there are many helpful and welcoming players. I have met so many cool people playing this game and, FFXIV is the first MMO I played where I raw dogged it solo without a close friend group and for the first 600 hours or so while I was gradually working towards end game and taking some detours into side content it was mostly positive. On the _other_ hand, I have seldom ever had an experience in a Free Company (the FFXIV name for a Guild) that ended positively. They are very cliquey, and its often necessary to join their Discords to meaningfully engage with them. I've seen an FC leader whose partner would tunnel in on and systematically get new members removed (without themselves being in the FC) simply because they were male and engaged in raid content with the FC leader without them present. I have seen an FC leader gaslight members into staying because they were uncomfortable with the atmosphere said leader created (political/extreme world view) and make it out to be the problem of said member, and then when they leave, monitor which other FCs they join and tell those FCs to boot them on false pretenses. Harassment? Yes. Reportable? Absolutely. Does that help? Sometimes, not always.

I reached a point where I just didn't want to be part of any of that stuff with FCs and put my toons into a solo FC for peace and silence. You might prefer to just tune out the FC entirely and enjoy whatever FC buffs they maintain as a new player regardless. Still, I'll join party finders to prog high end content, duty finder takes care of daily content for "tomes" (resources you use to acquire various forms of gear, usually to help with gearing up for high end raid content). You might rarely see some of the same people in these groups, but generally, they are ephemeral experiences and, most of the time positive (well with party finder the skill floor can be low and so you have to exercise more patience to clear high end content, but that comes with the territory).

Finally -- you will see many players with thousands of hours of game time writing reviews. This game can and will take up immense amounts of your time and possibly replace entire swaths of your livelihood if you're not careful. If you're one of the types that will grind ceaselessly until all the numbers for everything you can max out are indeed maxed out... you might enjoy it, but do make sure you take care of yourself. I've paused on this game for awhile because it was unrealistic to play and mind other things going on in my life and knowing full well I can ease back into it with the next major patch and get some catch-up gear and get back into it again is enough for me. Projecting myself onto you, the reader a bit (a smidge, mayhap). Just know your limits.

Take advantage of the free trial and see how you feel about it. I love the game, even with my misgivings about the aforementioned. Ask questions when you are stuck and a veteran or three will surely help. Speak up in instanced content when you're unsure about something and people will help/adjust. Even if you run it "solo" like I do now, you're never truly alone. You just have to speak up.

Good luck, prospective Warrior of Light o7

Content cadence is unacceptably slow, each patch feels like it has less and less to do especially if you have zero interest in end game raiding.

Should probably actually fix the server DDOS problems the last 6 months.

A 3D visual novel with social elements masquerading as an MMO. A bad MMO where classes and jobs are irrelevant, where stats are irrelevant, where gear is (mostly) irrelevant, where skills are irrelevant. A story that is 9% good and 91% badly composed of endless cutscenes, same unvoiced mountains of text in a box, same stock animations from NPC and fade walking into distance, same fetch quests, for every minute of gameplay, you will have a 1000 years of cutscenes and other shenanigans meant to justify taking your money. I won't talk about the community because I cannot describe those people without breaking rules of decency but there are countless posts on the internet for people to find if they are interested. Do not repeat my mistake and listen to those who lie to you that the game gets better after A Real Reborn (the Main Quest that lasts until the last level 50 one), the story is really bloated and intertwined with the horrible design and gameplay with billions of cutscenes and unvoiced textwalls with a single-player combat instance thrown there in between and while some parts of the story are good (but not enough of it) it is no justification for enduring the horrible and maddening quest design. If you want to try the game out, do the free trial and don't judge the game hastily - I too though that this game is really great but after playing on it became a repetitive, bloated and maddening experience where you feel like you are stuck into some never ending nightmare where all the same things happen but with a bit different flavor. Every expansion feels like it was made with the same checklist and made to justify your sub more than anything, every dungeon is the same corridor with the same enemy/boss and cutscene structure and so on. Even without Dawntrail the game is a bland repetitive slog and you are really better off playing single-player FF titles than let yourself be deceived by the brand to waste your time here.

Square Enix website/support is the worst i've ever seen for an mmo, and might genuinely have been put together by a 5 year old while the actual employee was passed out in a drunken stupor. I would not recommend this game if you'd actually like a company with bare minimum level competence.